F. Y. I.

By MICHAEL POLLAK

Published: February 12, 2006

Pucker Up

Q. I recently came across a mention of a bridge known in the 18th century as the Kissing Bridge, near the present Third Avenue and 77th Street. Tell me more.

A. That particular bridge was on or near the old Boston Post Road, and would have then been about four miles north of town. A requirement for a good kissing bridge, as with a lover's lane, is that it be picturesque, or off the beaten path to offer seclusion, or both.

According to the New-York Historical Society, there seem to have been at least three Kissing Bridges on the Boston Post Road in 18th-century Manhattan. The one by present-day 77th Street was also called the Sawkill Bridge, from the name of the stream it crossed. There was one around what is now East 51st Street and one at Roosevelt Street, which no longer exists, but ran southeast from Pearl Street at Park Row. (The Gov. Alfred E. Smith Houses are there now.)

The bridge at Roosevelt Street crossed the Old Kill, or Old Wreck Brook, and the 51st Street bridge crossed the De Voor's Mill Stream.

''A 1740 English visitor to New York, Archdeacon Burnaby of Leicester, kept a diary of his travels and mentioned that the Kissing Bridge was so-named because etiquette had it that a gentleman was supposed to kiss a lady in his company when upon the bridge,'' Eric Robinson, a reference assistant at the society, wrote in an e-mail message. ''Although it is somewhat unclear to me, it seems the archdeacon was referring specifically to the crossing around Roosevelt Street.''

To Those Who Measure

Q. In Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, there is a Bragg Street. Was it named after Braxton Bragg, the Confederate general?

A. It was named for reasons less noble than post-Civil War reconciliation. According to Ron Schweiger, Brooklyn's borough historian, when the land commissioners of Gravesend surveyed the Sheepshead Bay area in 1874, a number of surveyors employed as commissioners' assistants had new streets named after them. Among them was one F. S. Bragg. Other surveyors who had streets in Sheepshead Bay named for them were Haring, Batchelder, Ford, Coyle, Brigham and Knapp.

Pioneering the Blues

Q. As a blues lover, I was wondering: When did blues recording begin?

A. Mamie Smith, who sang in Harlem clubs before World War I and was a star of the musical revue ''Maid of Harlem,'' is credited with being the first black female singer to record the blues.

She recorded ''Crazy Blues'' on Aug. 10, 1920, apparently in New York; it sold a million copies in six months on the Okeh label and opened the eyes of producers to the potential of what were originally called race records. She led the way for Bessie Smith (no relation) and other blues and jazz greats.

Mamie Smith was made wealthy by the record's success. She toured and recorded with a band called the Jazz Hounds, which included a teenage saxophonist named Coleman Hawkins. She appeared in several films, among them ''Paradise in Harlem'' in 1939. She died in 1946.

The first black singer to record solo was George Washington Johnson, according to ''Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919'' by Tim Brooks. Johnson was born into slavery around 1846, moved to New York in the 1870's and became a street performer. His preserved recordings of minstrel songs date from 1890. MICHAEL POLLAK